But now that we are thinking about it, what do you think: How much physical love may a husband express toward his newly dead wife (or a wife to her husband)? Clearly, kissing the dead loved one is considered normal, but where is the line? If you had to make a law defining what constitutes a crime with respect to the treatment of a dead body, how much leeway would you give to the new widowers and widows?

Let's not get all embroiled in what the Egyptian Islamists do. Let's look at our own values. We're talking about when the state should prosecute somebody. Who should go to prison? Take into account that, under the Constitution, we have a right of privacy:

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights — older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.

About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously, and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

Well, now you have me thinking. Were legislators inundated with pleas from men or from women? Men whose wives are dying or alive and well? Or, considering what the husbands have in mind, perhaps 'dying' is the same as 'alive and well.'

I was waiting for just the right forum, Ann, to remind you that if you're going to tell one story (particularly about somewhere people are quick to jumo to conclusions about) you need to make sure you tell the whole story.

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights — older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.

I don't know how things go on a mountainside in Colorado, but isn't it conventionally "till death do you part"?

Scott M...Necrophilia is prohibited by the Torah written down by an Egyptian trained Hebrew who wrote it for Yahweh's Covenant Tribe after Yahweh used the guy to totally shame and defeat the Egyptian gods.

I suspect that the law against necrophilia was an attempt to keep the Hebrews pure from Egyptian spiritism.

Being one in spirit with the dead's spirit happens by cannibalism or by having sex with the dead's body.

Beat me too it. That was my idea, there could be no knowledge of consent. If you argue that because the body is not... errr having a brain fart...sentient, so no consent is needed, then could anybody have sex with the deceased? What about the mentally impaired? Someone like Terry Schiavo, who apparently was too stupid to be allowed to live. Should we have considered allowing her to be used in such a fashion?

I am really trying hard not to crack on Islam...see what a good boy I am professor.

Western tradition is that dead bodies are not the property of their survivors. Without a property interest, civil actions can only be brought for emotional distress damages and criminal prosecutions turn on the outrage factor. Also, who molests a dead body? A Crazy Person. Defense.

2. People who think there needs to be a specific law for everything.

Dead people don't have a right to privacy but there is a cultural tradition that they rest in peace and be treated with respect. Question of fact for a jury.

Take into account that, under the Constitution, we have a right of privacy:

Recognizing the the Professor will hand me my head on this, I have to ask, "We do?".

We have an Amendment that gives us the right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure, but no right to privacy, the appellate courts notwithstanding. Until somebody puts it in black and white in an Amendment, all we have is a court decision and they are hardly carved in stone.

The first is health laws. After a certain point, corpses can spread diseases. I'm no expert on this, but in a hot climate like Egypt you probably don't want dead bodies laying around for too long.

The second reason is that "abusing" a corpse could be very disturbing to the relatives and friends of the deceased. I believe that relatives can sue if organs have been taken out or dissections done without permission.

I think we have finally hit upon the explanation of Helen Thomas' conception.

Seriously, the only good reason to keep people from tampering with corpses is that it makes it difficult to determine the cause of death and collect evidence when there has been foul play. If a man comes home, finds his wife dead and starts humping her then you can see how this might corrupt some of the evidence. He should at least wait behind the tape until the police are done.

Also, sometimes I wonder if things like this are only proposed by the Egyptian equivalent of Al Sharpton, Sandra Fluke or Jeremiah Wright... people so far outside the norms of their culture that they are considered an embarrassment.

Look the Islamists want to screw your dead mother. Look the Republicans want to steal your lady parts. These sorts of games go on everywhere.

I don't understand how a dead husband could engage in a sexual act with his grieving widow,

Rigor mortis

I think kissing or embracing the corpse is fine because it shows affection. Affection can be directed without reciprocation. Sex, or at least the acceptable kind, requires some reciprocity. Otherwise it's like a blow-up doll, but real. And dead. Eww.

Typical double standard of western imperialists. There's no law against having sex with Nancy Pelosi, but, what with all that botox, her face has been dead for years. For the record, even though it's violative of cultural norms, I would still have sex wth Meg Ryan.

"I don't understand how a dead husband could engage in a sexual act with his grieving widow, I know some people irreverently call dead bodies "stiffs" but..."

Maybe if he were hanged to death.

But of course my question isn't limited to penetrative sex. I'm picturing the woman who encounters the dead body of her husband and gets into bed with him/it and embraces it passionately and for a long time, for example.

That non-textual right to privacy really isn't that old. Laws prohibiting non-vaginal intercourse are present from the beginning of the American colonies well into the twentieth century. As late as 1974, Maryland was still revising their criminal prohibition on oral sex, making it a $1000 fine.

While it is a deviant behavior, it is also implicitly consensual. The state should permit them to engage in this unproductive behavior, but society should recognize it has no interest in normalizing it. As with similar deviant behaviors without productive output, but with increased risk of contracting diseases, the state should regulate for hygienic conditions. Perhaps protective measures such as condoms should be provided to the widow, widower, or any other grieving solicitor.

Remember, if we're making criminal law, we're talking about what the state can do to the individual.

The moral question of how one person ought to treat another is quite different. Most of the bad things we do to each other are not crimes and should not be crimes.

I'm interested in the difficulty people are having addressing the issue. Assume someone who's done things to his wife's body that you think are outrageous. Now, when would you prosecute him? That's the legal question. You're fixating on Egypt as if they were writing a law saying this is something widowers ought to do, to get what they've got coming to them. I find it annoying that you are fixating on that. I specifically requested that you refrain from bitching about those other people over there and think about American values.

I'm deleting comments that seem to be little more than Islam bashing. I don't know if that's coming from mobys, but I consider it ignorant and distracting.

"That non-textual right to privacy really isn't that old. Laws prohibiting non-vaginal intercourse are present from the beginning of the American colonies well into the twentieth century. As late as 1974, Maryland was still revising their criminal prohibition on oral sex, making it a $1000 fine."

You're assuming that if rights were violated, they did not exist. Convenient!

Thanks for the update from the Hunchback. I've never read that, although I'm somewhat familiar with the story.

As far as what the criminal law should say about what spouses do with each others corpses. It should say nothing. I doubt that anyone who uses a corpse for sexual gratification would be at all concerned about what the law says anyway. Further, I would think almost no one would do much beyond an embrace or cheek.

I had a horrible horrible dream once that my oldest son had died. In my dream, I lifted him from the hospital bed, and held him and wept. In my dream, I knew I had to put him down, but could not. I certainly wouldn't want the state to impose penalties for someone holding their loved one for "too long." I also have in mind how the Santorum family grieved for their child. Weird to some, maybe. Criminal? I would hope not.

I was a wreck for days after that dream, and it still gives me shivers.

I don't understand how a dead husband could engage in a sexual act with his grieving widow, I know some people irreverently call dead bodies "stiffs" but...

Maybe if he were hanged to death.

But of course my question isn't limited to penetrative sex. I'm picturing the woman who encounters the dead body of her husband and gets into bed with him/it and embraces it passionately and for a long time, for example.

Field Marshal Ludendorff did something like that with his dead stepson and people thought it was weird.

This is, too.

We understand people who can't let go have a problem. The Moslems really need to get at least to the Renaissance, if not the 18th Century.

The moral question of how one person ought to treat another is quite different. Most of the bad things we do to each other are not crimes and should not be crimes.

Are you conflating moral and legal concerns? Your question addresses the moral aspect, but you refer to the legal aspect of the question, too.

Moral? I don't think so, but sex with a corpse doesn't hurt anyone.

Legal? The state should not punish someone for having sex with his or her dead spouse. Sex with a corpse is nobody's damned business. The 'why' behind the sex with a corpse is nobody's business. There are already laws that cover things like disturbing the evidence, if it was a homicide, or sex with a corpse that isn't "yours". The state already has too many ways to butt into bedrooms, too much power to punish people for sexual thoughts.

I will say, though, that I might pay more attention to the smile on the corpse in the casket.

Blue@9 (posted at 2:27) hits the nail on the head. Sex is--and is supposed to be--a mutual, cooperative act. when it's not, that's when things start running afoul of the law. That's one reason why we say we have sex "with" someone, not "to" someone. You can't have sex with a corpse, because the corpse is not having sex with you. You can only use it as a masturbation receptacle, which is to say, as an object... and that is the height of disrespect.

Then I thought back to when my wife passed away. Seems to me anything that impedes the official certification of death or impedes the official removal of the body for preparation (for embalming or cremation), ought to be illegal. So in that 10 minutes, or hour (or however long), before the coroner/doctor arrives to officially pronounce the spouse to be dead, that person is still 'your' spouse. I assume there would be other statutes that would apply regarding mutilation of a corpse, failure to notify of a death, etc.

It took me a minute to realize it, but Christopher hit on the issue exactly with his tongue comment.

The goodbye kiss isn't about pleasure. And I don't see the point of a goodbye boink except necrophilia. So I don't think it's about "line drawing," exactly. They are two fundamentally different things.

But a line does have to be drawn and the place to put that line is wherever society is comfortable putting it. There is no right or wrong, just icky and not icky.

We had to read Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" in 9th grade, in which a rich young woman's fiance disappears, and his skeleton is found decades later on one of her beds, with a single long GRAY hair on the other pillow. Someone thought this would appeal to adolescent boys. Thankfully, I rediscovered Faulkner in college.

If this law is enforced strictly, will it be slanderous to say of a couple that they've come and gone?

They've made it much more difficult to have someone committed, which is how this situation probably used to be handled in the West, assuming it ever actually occurred and was discovered, so maybe a criminal law is needed. You can't drag a dead body through the streets legally, can you, after death is pronounced?

When they first called the 50 state governments "laboratories of democracy", I don't believe they meant Frankenstein's lab.

"The goodbye kiss isn't about pleasure. And I don't see the point of a goodbye boink except necrophilia. So I don't think it's about "line drawing," exactly. They are two fundamentally different things."

But who are you to say what form love should take within the sacred bond of someone else's marriage? You don't see the point, but what if they did?

The exact same thing happens to the dead in America - but it takes a bit longer that 6 hours and it's performed by the government. I believe the term is called "estate taxes". By comparison, the Egyptian proposal is much more appealing.

The background of this is anal sex with a freshly deceased corpse, or better, a dying body. Purpose is to experience the anal contractions coincident with the death process. Very common practice among Ottoman and other soldiers of the ME. Thus, "the terrible Turk." Anal sex is widely practiced in the ME now, and in Afghanistan especially on boys. "Women for bearing, men for pleasure.", the saying is there. Not an uncommon attitude now in "the West.". But in ME it is exegeted as not homoerotic, a neat trick. Thus, "There are no homosexuals in Iran." It would be characteristic for Egyptian religious puritans to formally legalize anal intercourse with a freshly dead or even a terminally dying wife. Nothing outside long-standing ME practice.

All marriages in this country end upon death. The rights that accrue to the widow/widower upon the death of the spouse are generally property rights, however, even though most courts leave funeral and burial arrangements to the preference of the spouse, it isn't because the corpse is their property, it is because communities recognise the grieving process of the one who once was (theoretically) the closest person to them. Funerals and burials need to happen in very short order, there isn't time for lawsuits in the matter. Having acknowledged that we do give preference to the widowed, we do not permit anyone to alter or manipulate a corpse to satisfy their own agenda without very clear and specific instructions from the decedent (organ donation) or public health/criminal law (contagion/criminal suits) because we acknowledge as a community that to dust we all return.

For the most part, US law is based on the Christian expectation of our sure and certain resurrection from the dead - which is to say cemeteries aren't sacred space because of the dead bodies, but because a great miracle will one day happen there, everyone in them will come up out of there alive! You can see, then, how we treat a corpse is of concern, and it is better to treat it circumspectly rather than to do whatever feels good to you at the moment. We all got the opportunity to live, we will all die, and how we treat the corpse is always relevant to how much we value the unique creature that is every human being.

While no religious viewpoint of whether the souls of the dead will ever have use for their bodies, or the dust thereof, again is provable or unprovable, I think you will find that the vast majority of people do not want others fiddling around with their corpses after they go. In this case, a criminal conviction and a short term in prison is sufficient to either make the idea of sexual activity with your dead wife more hassle than it's worth, or marks the individual as someone who has sexual boundary issues and gives them a season to address whatever attitudes that give them the idea that a sexual urge has to be satisfied at whatever cost. Generally, such persons persist in the behaviour and just how many dead spouses are we to believe they deserve?

Althouse:But who are you to say what form love should take within the sacred bond of someone else's marriage?

Because we're having a discussion about it. I agree with some of the others that the government should have no say in this (apart from the usual stuff regarding handling of corpses), but this is the kind of topic where you cannot possibly prevent us from talking about the morality and "creepiness factor" of it.

Putting aside the "special pre-arranged consent" scenario for a second*, I'll restate that it's creepy because it's not similar to regular sex. Sex, especially the kind between two people in love, is a reciprocal act. Corpse-fucking is about fucking a corpse. The survivor isn't giving any pleasure to his partner--he's just getting off on an inanimate body. It's like fucking your partner when she's passed out drunk, only in this instance she's at room-temperature and not breathing. So my visceral reaction is "Yuck."

*How would this special consent conversation go? "Hey baby, when I'm dead I want you crawl on top of me..."

Nothing is more important in islam than delineating the boundaries of halal and haram sex, so naturally, it would be the first order of business for the Ikhwan once in power (as it was for the Ayatollah who immediately reduced the age of consent for girls to nine). That being said, I hope this underscores the importance of the fact that making sex slaves of unsubmitting infidel women falls on the "halal" side of the islamic border, as does sex with one's prepubescent "wife" (See e.g. Ayatollah, above).

Humanity managed very well with no laws for most of our existence. Removing many thousands of them would go a long way toward advancing human happiness and well being today. We might usefully enforce about a dozen laws. Maybe.

One of these laws should provide that anyone who reasons along the lines of "unless there's a law against it, husbands are liable to screw their dead wives (or screw them after they've been dead too long, or whatever) so we had better forbid it and anyone who disagrees is soft on necrophilia" has to be dipped in dogshit and stoned until they admit error or die.

It seems pretty simple to me. Unless the state has a compelling interest, who cares? So long as it isn't mandated, I find it hard to believe many would do it, and even harder to see how this could effect social degeneracy. Let people deal with their dead companions as they seem fit. They don't care. Why should the state?

Ioconnu, I know I risk being dipped in dogshit and stoned to death for even asking, but:

Suppose your next door neighbor just got done rogering his wife's warm corpse. Do you want to still live next to the sick son-of-a-bitch? Particularly if you have small children?

I'll assume not. So if you'd like him removed from your company, but you wouldn't have him removed from society, aren't you saying NIMBY?

The next time I make a really offensive slippery slope argument about goat-fucking, I hope no one here attacks me for taking things too far. There are numerous people here defending abuse of a corpse on libertarian grounds. Man-goat love is about two notches less depraved than necrophilia.

Dante, I guess that same argument could be made to defend cannibalism, too. But then again, why am I even trying to find something worse than what you're suggesting should be legal? The slippery slope doesn't apply when you've hit rock-bottom.

Tell you what, Dante: You and Iuconnu should go and form your own country, a libertarian paradise of corpse-diddling and pot-smoking. I'll stay in this one, with its draconian limits on personal liberty and abuse of corpses. I bet a few other people will choose to live here too.

Pastafarian, you risk no such things under my proposed penalty for irritating everyone with bad laws. You could just admit error and carry on enjoying the sweet air of freedom, no longer stunk up by hysterical authoritarians dipped in dogshit.

As for the rest of it, there's no telling who I live next to now. You either. I'm not worried. It's the people in the next town who are really scary.